Surprise! Feminine beauty? I may get there in a bit, but the quotation from Magnificat, and a conversation I had earlier this morning with a very good friend also play an important part. The conversation dealt with, among other things, Neil Gaimen’s novel, Stardust, and then the movie that was made from the novel, also called Stardust. For the sake of economy and clarity, our central concern was with the Catholic sacrament of Confession and my delight in feminine beauty.
Essentially, when does my delight in feminine beauty become a sin that ought to be rejected, confessed, and given up? My primary example was Claire Danes who plays the fallen star in Stardust, though there are two other beautiful actresses in the movie as well: Sienna Miller and Michelle Pfeiffer. As I explained to my friend, feminine beauty has always been close to the center of my interests in life, and now at almost 84 it seems to be the last thing that I have to struggle to let go of in this life. The reason is thus: feminine beauty, like any number of other things in creation, may very well reveal God; feminine beauty, however, is not an absolute, not divine, and therefore must finally be given up. Even though it is a good thing and desirable, one (this one) must let go. Consider Paolo and Francesca in The Divine Comedy. Their sin goes much deeper than simply a desire for beauty, as a close examination of the text should make perfectly clear.
To see a right attitude toward feminine beauty in literature, consider Adam’s reaction to the unclothed and beautiful Eve in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 4 and following. Much of that poem is about the consequence of his failure to trust God and give up Eve in light of her disobedience. You might say Adam chooses Eve’s beauty and (former) goodness over God’s inherent, absolute beauty and goodness. [For the difference between “Undivided Beauty,” unfallen Eve, and the consequences of that fall for Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, see my essay in Christianity and Literature: Wisdom and Beauty: Two Principles in Paradise Lost. L. Eugene Startzman. Available accessResearch articleFirst published June 1, 1987pp. 26–39. xml PDF / EPUB.]
To turn to Dante again, Dante, the literary character, near the end of the poem has followed Beatrice, her intelligence, beauty and goodness, all the way to the ninth circle of Heaven, but he is required to give her up, let go, before he can meet or see God and Christ in the center, so to speak. The character who takes her place is a contemplative, Saint Bernard; the way of contemplation is the negative way, “neither is this Thou.” Dante, having found Beatrice, does not get to keep her. That’s crudely put but it gets at the truth.
Okay, back to the poverty of my mundane problem. On the one hand, there is the very delightful and beautiful Claire Dane’s character, Yvaine, in the movie. There is, I submit, nothing wrong in my seeing and delighting in those qualities, as does her counterpart in the movie, Tristan Thorne. In the novel and somewhat in the movie, Tristan is required to give up his superficial first love, Victoria (Sienna Miller), and then come to see the “fallen star” as a valuable woman (person) in her own right and not simply a thing to be bound and dragged as a gift in exchange for Victoria’s “love.” Of course he does change, develop and “grow up as a consequence of his time with her. An interesting element of the movie in this regard is that Victoria becomes more “ordinary looking” by the end of the movie while Yvaine chooses to reveal her extraordinary inner “intense starlight.” In a sense we experience that moment in the movie to understand who she really is and the gift she is bringing to Tristan. It is this inner reality that defeats finally the evil witch who with her two evil sisters is determined to kill the star woman and take her heart in order to gain for themselves beauty, youth, and extended life. There are more ways in the novel and the movie in which these goods and evils unfold and play out though my central concern should be clear enough.
As I was thinking about my problem with feminine beauty, I happened to remember the way in which this concern manifested itself when I was a hormonal teenager, 15 or 16. Even then I had acquired a small collection of beautiful women which I kept in the top drawer of my chest of drawers. Pictures, let me quickly add; these were images of beautiful women, Ava Gardiner for one; they were not lewd images or pornographic images. That kind of image, I knew, even then, would have been a betrayal of what delighted me.
The heart of my small collection and probably the only reason I remember this collection, besides the lovely Ava Gardner, is that it contained a studio photo of an Italian actress, Rossana Podesta, who played Helen of Troy in a 50’s movie of the same name. She was so beautiful. In fact she was so beautiful that I wrote to the California studio requesting a photo of her. No response. Two years went by and one day in my parents’ mail there was an envelope for me from Italy. Italy! Inside was a studio head shot of Rosanna Podesta. I was overawed. I now had a real treasure to possess; however, as I grew a little older my collection began to gnaw at my conscience. Somehow I knew it had to go because these images were simply shadows of real young ladies, the kind of young ladies whom I had begun dating. To my credit I knew the collection had to go. [Talk about God being at work in my young life!] They were, after all, only paper, not flesh and blood. No problem, I thought. I shall tear them up and throw them away. Well, all but one, of course: Rossana. I could hold on to that one; no harm, surely. Hold on to; let go. Deep down I realized that she had to go too. That hurt. I destroyed the entire collection, and to this day there is something within me that regrets that loss. I suspect that in some sense there is something within me that keeps the problem alive: hold on; give up. “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” From the outside I am certain the problem seems petty; from the inside it is not.
My problem then is not the delighting in the character’s (actress’s) beauty, but in my desire to hold on to it and somehow, impossibly, possess that beauty for my self. The problem is then not being able to say “no” and to let it go. Simply put, I have trouble letting go. In the movie the central characters exchange hearts, give their love to one another, then marry and become the King and Queen of the land of Stormhold. Again King and Queen are appropriate images for man and woman who were made in the image of God (Genesis). Adam and Eve were, in Eden, King and Queen, not by holding on to their identity as first man and woman, but by letting go, obeying GOD. The problem again looks petty from the outside—just one fruit from an entire garden full of fruit trees. Clearly, from the inside the problem is enormous. But that’s a problem (inside/outside) that I like Milton’s Adam and all Shakespeare’s Kings and Queens must work out, and as I see by my response to Yvaine in the movie, I’m still not ready to meet God face to face.
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This passage from Mark always seems relevant in the love Jesus offers and in the young man’s failure to follow through, almost inability to follow through.
A reading from
the holy Gospel according to Mark10:17-27
As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.” He replied and said to him, “Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, “You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” At that statement, his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Of course the young man’s sadness is not the end of the story, for there is hope as well, as Jesus explains:
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!” The disciples were amazed at his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, “Children, how hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For men it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.”
If the habit of sin is too deeply entrenched, God will not let us be lost as long as our desire for Heaven is great as well. Two wonderful images from literature reveal the continuation of man’s inability. The first is found in C. S. Lewis’s Great Divorce. Another young man finding himself on the threshold of Heaven has a red lizard on his shoulder, riding him. The Angel he meets there requires that he get rid of the red lizard before he can proceed further up and further in. The young man cannot do it, though he would like to. The Angel will take the red lizard from him, but only if the young man agrees. He reluctantly agrees. The Angel takes the lizard off, breaks its back, throws it to the ground where it is transformed into a magnificent stallion that the man then climbs up on and rides into the Heart of Heaven to the astonishment of all those watching. This encounter is, for this reader, unforgettable.
The second passage is from Dante’s Purgatorio, no surprise I imagine! Dante, the character, has climbed the incredible high mountain with Virgil, his guide, and another poet, Statius, who has been cleansed from his habit of sin and thus released. One thing remains for both Statius and Dante and that is walk through the refining fire at the top of the mountain. The fire is an image of the Cherubin with flaming sword who guards the entrance to Eden. Dante is terrified; he can feel the heat. He has seen men burned to death. He stops. Virgil, however, explains that the Garden of Eden and especially Beatrice await him on the other side. Dante is required to screw his courage to the sticking place and walk through. Virgil will lead, Statius will follow Dante who is in the middle between them. Here is another unforgettable image. God will do the final cleansing but the sinner must agree; the two parties work together and whatever the sinner is finally holding on to shall be consumed. Gulp. Right reason tells me that these encounters are good and true images of the really real. No one holding on to anything can meet God face to face.
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I imagine anyone who is still with me may be wondering what this meditation has to do with anything written above. First we live in a culture that has simply denied the validity of this kind of thinking about human nature and objective reality. Instead our images of the human have simply deteriorated into subhuman categories. Whether you understand the human self as substantive King and Queen or perversely as Drag Queen and Narcissus, you will be defined by your choice. If you have a sound understanding of the first, the ontological meaning of King and Queen, you will recognize the second as a great perversion of the first. How do you go about understanding the first, if you don’t already? Well, I was an English literature teacher and our great literature frequently explores the meaning of these images of the human. Malory’s King Arthur is one of my favorites, though there is something about his Kingship that eventually brings down the Round Table and Camelot, something worth discovering about human nature.. Renaissance literature is filled with images of Kings and Queens. King Lear is truly a great example, for at the beginning of the play he is everything a King should not be; then, through a magnificent unfolding of the action of the play, the King Lear discovers what true kingship really means, and we discover it with him; our humanity, as well as his, is at stake here. Then there is the weak Richard II, the flawed and guilt ridden Henry IV and Shakespeare’s crowning character, Henry V. I wouldn’t want to leave out, of course, Macbeth and his Queen, Lady Macbeth. We may also slip back in time to Greece particularly, and the Kingship of Oedipus and the riddle at the heart of that play. Literature! Do you have “chronological snobbery”: “I won’t read anything written before 1950!” Or perhaps “gender bias?” “All that early literature was written by dead white men!” If, on the other hand, you believe there is such a thing as objective truth, you must be willing to follow wherever it leads or to what ever reveals it. “Follow me.”
Another area regarding images, one I have little interest in, yet one that seems to fascinate many others: that’s the image of the British monarchy about which our culture can’t seem to get enough images and information. Elizabeth I was always a person of fascination for me given her times, my interest in the feminine and the fact that she was a woman in it, struggling to maintain her power and her integrity. The second Elisabeth, for me not so much, though I suspect that she, like Victoria, has much to reveal.
The third focus on Queen as image should not come as a surprise: in Dante the Virgin Mary from Heaven sends Saint Lucy to Beatrice, Beatrice to Virgil, Virgil to Dante., the character in the poem. There we have a series of images of Grace in action that also reveal various principles of the divine and human, particularly Mary’s response to God through the image of the Angel Gabriel: “Let it be to me according to your word.” What we see here at the heart of the human, so to speak, is that there are really only two meaningful responses, “Yes” and “No.” I suspect (believe) that there is fundamentally only one question and we find that in the text that seems so irrelevant to many in our culture.
In any case I liked the way the meditation below defined the role of the Holy Spirit in my considerations of feminine beauty, though I divided the meditation a little differently from the original, to emphasize the role of the burning bush as an image of reality.
Regarding the image to go with this essay, I found some from the movie but they didn’t transfer well to this text. One was a Sandro Botticelli image of the Virgin and Child; Botticelli’s works delight me; think of the most famous one which would be an extremely apt image for this essay.. However, the machine wouldn’t load the Botticelli image, so I shall try the Claire Danes image. It wouldn’t upload that one either. Rosanna Podesta? Nope! Does God keep saying “no” here? Apparently, since I do not have an acceptable image for this text and may have to “publish” this text without it. If I can figure out what has gone wrong, I shall add an image later, though it almost seems fitting not to have one, very fitting. “Neither is this Thou!”
Accepting the Kingdom of God [Magnificat’s Meditation for today, Saturday, 5/25/24.]
I behold you, O God, Father, Word, and Spirit, and I know you are looking for your creature with sovereign wisdom and eternal goodness; so that it seems that you have no glory or pleasure except in your creature who is yet so vile. Your Spirit is the love by which you try to attract him.
And his heart which receives this Spirit is like the bush that Moses saw, burning but not consumed. With supreme purity, it burns with the desire that God may never be offended, and it is consumed with the desire that God be honored, although it does not seem to be consumed.
Come, come, Holy Spirit! Come, union of the Father, contentment of the Word, glory of the angels. O Spirit of Truth, you are the reward of the saints, the refreshment of souls, light in darkness, wealth of the poor, treasure of those who love, abundance of food for the hungry, comfort of pilgrims, and in a word, the One who contains all treasures.
O Holy Spirit, with everlasting wisdom you gently urge rational creatures who want to receive your gifts, but you do not take away their liberty. You knock at all hearts, but you knock gently, urging each one to prepare to receive these gifts. Softly singing, you are the source of sweet tears. Rejoicing and lamenting, you strive ardently that everyone may be disposed to receive you. May the intellect admire, the will and memory understand your immense goodness, O Holy Spirit, in infusing yourself and all your gifts into the soul! O Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Word, you infuse yourself into the soul so gently that it does not understand you, and, not being understood, your ineffable gift is esteemed by few. Yet besides your goodness, you infuse into the soul the power of the Father, and the wisdom of the Son. The soul, having thus become powerful and wise, is made fit to bear you within itself as a sweet Guest, cherishing you, that is, behaving in such a way that you take pleasure in it and do not leave it.
Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi
Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi († 1607) was a Carmelite nun and mystic in Florence. / Cited in Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Every Day of the Liturgical Year. Translated by the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Boston from the original Italian edition Intimità Divina del P. Gabrielle di S. Maria Maddalena. © Monastero S. Giuseppe – Carmelitane Scalze. Published by Baronius Press. www.baroniuspress.com. Used with permission.
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